


Chance Encounters

by digitalScribbler



Series: Crossed Threads [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Canon, Gen, Injury, Medical, Near Death, Superpowers, What else is new, madeira finds a new project, metahuman, nonbinary characters - Freeform, victor almost dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28059210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digitalScribbler/pseuds/digitalScribbler
Summary: Sometimes, the chance encounters of fate put our lives on courses we don't expect. And sometimes, you have to patch up a bleeding man on your lunch break.That's what happens when Madeira finds Victor half-dead on her doorstep like a stray cat.
Series: Crossed Threads [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175429
Kudos: 1
Collections: Canon, Price Brothers





	Chance Encounters

She had felt the blast, sure, but didn't really give it a second thought. Her workshop was nestled in the alleys between East Liberty and Southside, and crazy sounds weren't anything new. There were always gangs having fights, or metas with too much power, and she really preferred to do her work and leave the worrying about that to someone else. Maybe a hero or something. 

So it had already slipped her mind to be concerned when she hears another, much more mundane sound. Madeira thinks the knock on her door is imaginary at first, that's how soft it is. She doesn't have any appointments, no fittings, no deals. A quick flip through her phone confirms no en route Grubhub afternoon snack orders, either. But there it is again, soft but somehow so, so desperate against the metal of the door. It was even less strong this time. Her brow furrows at the offhanded observation. _That can’t be good._

She opens the door and a quick "holy fuck" immediatley escapes her mouth when she registers what’s there. 

The man half-standing, half-leaning on the doorframe is muscle and bone being held together by willpower alone. He looks barely her age, practically still a kid, and wow, that's a lot of blood.  
"Holy shit, what happened to you? Where did you even-" 

His head barely moves when she speaks, but it does, just enough to see the shadow of a face covered in tangled, blood-soaked curls. The distant wail of sirens reminds Madeira of the rumble ten minutes ago and for a second she’s silent. A thick, slurred exhale escapes the man’s lips, the start of a word, D-something? But it’s cut off by a cough and his body starts to slump a bit lower against the brick.

"Oh. Fuck, okay. Guess we’re doing this, huh?" Madeira says in half-panic, half-intrigue. She’s slowly realizing that today her job isn't going to just be patching up the injured, it's going to be saving the dying. But that’s always much more interesting.

Her brain is buzzing with questions but she has no time to ask them. She pulls him inside without a second thought. His - god, well, everything - is leaving marks of red all across her shop floor, but Madeira doesn't even have time to mentally complain.

“Jesus, there's so much blood, how are you even still alive?” she asks, to no one in particular, really. She doesn’t even hear if there’s a response, if he managed to choke one out at all - her single focus is getting him on the operating table. 

She’s just strong enough to lift his body over the table, barely paying enough attention in her singular, too-sharp focus to hear the barely-audible "sorry" as he lets out a grunt of pain and a string of slurred curses. She’s already closing blinds, locking doors, rushing to the front of the shop to turn off her open sign.

As she flicks on the surgery light array, however, she’s suddenly a whole other level of calm, her abundant energy snapping into a single thread of intention. She looks him up and down again, this time assessing with the eye of a surgeon. Shrapnel wounds in the abdomen and shoulders, chemical burns covering pretty much anything from the waist up, mostly the arms, back, and face. Without immediate intervention they'll likely bleed out in minutes, not to mention even if they make it they’ll probably lose most, if not all, use of their arms.

"You really got yourself messed up, huh? Wonder why," she muses mostly to herself, slipping on a pair of tight latex gloves and getting the IV drip started. "Shame there's a 90% chance you'll die and I'll never find out."

She needs to get him knocked out. Madeira taps on the IV display, her brow knitting as the anesthetic levels sink down to zero and blink red. _Damn, gone already? Gotta order more from that Dimer guy._ She looks down at the face on the table and back to the display. _Well, what's the next best thing I’ve got?_ Her fingers tap and slide a few more times, and soon the morphine levels start to lower, too. 

"There we go..." she croons, watching the pained grimace and swears fade into a half-aware fog of vague mutters. She can barely make out the words - some of them sound like a name, others an apology. _God, he's barely coherent, huh?_

Madeira shakes her head, something tiny in her feeling dark and sad and sorry, but there’s no time to dwell on it. She snaps down her visor, the display of the welding mask illuminating with a flash and taking in everything on the table. She scans down the list of things to do with increasingly mounting morbid excitement: acid neutralization, shrapnel removal, neuron repair.  
She picks up her scalpel, a catlike grin spreading across her face. _Yeah, this one’s going to be very interesting._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Madeira is a very fun character to write but I don't do it much, so I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> This directly follows the events described in one of my other pieces, so I recommend you check out Nightmares and all the other work in the collection. 
> 
> She and Victor are part of a world I write with pepperdot, so check out their work, too!!


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